Monday, February 2, 2015

Don’t Be That Guy: Reasons Not to Feed Wildlife

Over the holidays, I had the pleasure of visiting Grand
Canyon National Park for the fourth time (one of these years I’m going to do
it properly and hike to the bottom of the damn thing). The park is full of
sheer vertical cliffs, dangerous rapids, and mountain lions, and in summer is
dangerously hot and dry. In the park gift stores they sell a book titled Death in the Grand Canyon. But you know
what one of the most common injuries rangers have to deal with is?

Squirrel bites.

Parks are often full of signs reminding people not to feed
the wildlife, and the Grand Canyon is no exception; at one of the most popular
overlooks we passed signs about keeping wildlife wild about every twenty feet
along the path. So why do people do it anyway? And what’s so bad about feeding
wild animals, anyway (other than the risk of squirrel-related injuries)?

In fact, feeding wild animals is bad for both the animals
and the people who do it. Forget squirrel bites, I once watched a woman in
Yellowstone Park encourage her young son to feed some grass to an enormous bull
elk so she could take a picture, a situation that very easily could have ended
with the boy gored to death. Animals can also pass diseases on to humans when
they come into close contact.

Taking handouts often leads to suffering for the animals
involved. Human food is often harmful to animals’ health, since their digestive
systems aren’t adapted to it and it may not contain the nutrients they need to
survive. Over time, animals who get fed lose their fear of humans, a process
called “habituation,” which makes them increasingly dangerous to people and
increasingly at risk of accidents such as being hit by cars. When this happens,
rangers and wildlife managers sometimes try to relocate problem animals to
backcountry areas where they’re less likely to encounter humans, but relocation
is stressful and many relocated animals eventually die after failing to
establish a new territory.

Of course, it’s important to note that not all wildlife feeding is harmful—there’s
nothing particular terrible about backyard birdfeeders, as long as you clean
them regularly and can live with the fact that hawks may use them as
all-you-can-eat buffets.

Returning to our car at one Grand Canyon scenic viewpoint,
my fiancé and I watched a man with a very large, very expensive camera (the
conspicuous kind that you buy if you want everyone else to know how much you
can afford to spend on a camera, my fiancé informed me) baiting ravens in the
parking lot with pieces of bread, enticing them to come closer and pose for
photographs. This after presumably having walked past multiple “please don’t
feed the animals” signs over the course of his day. Don’t be that guy, okay?